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Joanna Newsom is composed on record and messy in reality

Countless write-ups have described “Divers” as Joanna Newsom’s most “accessible” album, a trend that left the California-bred singer/songwriter/harpist scratching her head during an early December phone interview.

“I guess I’ve been surprised to hear it called ‘accessible’ insofar as I’ve been surprised to hear my previous records called ‘inaccessible’ in the past,” said Newsom, 33, who, in addition to her thriving music career, has recently landed acting roles on screens both large (Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice”) and small (“Portlandia”) — though she’s yet to act alongside husband and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star Andy Samberg. “I’m not insulted when people call it accessible. I mean, that’s good. I’d like all of them to be accessible.”

While Newsom doesn’t dial down the ambition on the strange, beautiful album (her fourth), a handful of songs are more straightforward than past Faberge-ornate efforts, such as “Same Old Man,” which finds the musician flirting with airy mountain folk. A similar directness bleeds into the lyrics, and throughout Newsom wrestles with concepts like mortality, love and the unrelenting march of time. She also flashes a wicked sense of humor at times: “The longer you live,” she sings on “Leaving the City,” “the higher the rent.”

So it’s not like you entered into the writing process for “Divers” with the idea you wanted to make something more universal, I take it?

Definitely not. And there are lots of elements on this record I’ve used on albums in the past. I think maybe one reason people keep calling it more accessible is it has shorter songs, which my first album “The Milk-Eyed Mender” had, and not really any of the other ones since. That’s part of it, and that makes sense to me. When someone is listening to an album, he or she doesn’t necessarily want to listen to 17-minute-long songs.

Did you do that purposefully? Was it in some way a reaction to “Have One on Me” [Newsom’s third album, from 2010, clocked in at more than two hours], which was a longer, more immersive experience?

Right. No, I didn’t do it as a reaction to “Have One on Me,” but it certainly was intentional. For me, I had a sense of what the structure and concept for this album were going to be pretty early on. I knew the songs would be interconnected narratively and harmonically, and I knew they were going to be very densely layered in terms of instrumentation and arrangement. Because I was visualizing this sort of vertical density — layers upon layers upon layers that give the songs a lot of height — I think I wanted them to be shorter horizontally. They felt more concentrated to me. More condensed.

The songs are so beautifully arranged. Are you as composed in your day-to-day, or is your car an absolute mess?

[Laughs] It’s funny you say that because maybe 20 minutes ago I was attempting to clean my house before I go on tour. I’m very untidy in my life, and I’m always working on it. It makes me super bummed out that I’m 33 years old and I can’t keep my desk clean. I think my level of organization and focus in making music has always been the exception to the rule throughout my life. It’s been the one place with no disorder, and everything else is constantly low-level falling apart. No emergencies or anything, but there’s constant mail-losing and that kind of thing.

A number of the new press photos include a parrot in the shot. What word or phrase would it undoubtedly pick up if it actually lived in your home?

[Laughs] Uhh … wow. What’s the word or phrase I say the most? Good question. I stub my toe a lot, so profanities abound in my house. I’m very clumsy; pick any bad word and I probably shout it twice a day.

“Sapokanikan” includes a reference to “Ozymandias.” Did you discover that work via “Breaking Bad,” like I’m guessing a number of people did?

[Laughs] Absolutely not. “Ozymandias” is complete canon! It’s what, fourth grade you have to read “Ozymandias”?

Maybe your fourth grade class was more advanced than most.

[Laughs] I mean, I love “Breaking Bad,” but part of what makes me so interested in that poem is that is so canonical and it is so integrated in our understanding of English literature, and yet most of us don’t know there was a second “Ozymandias” poem. Horace Smith and [Percy] Shelley were basically friends that had a bet, or competition, as far as who could write the best “Ozymandias” poem. And the victor, Shelley, created a work that was entered into the canon that let’s say many fourth graders have to read — not all — whereas Horace Smith was basically forgotten.

I know people say “don’t read the comments,” but have you seen the top YouTube comment on the video for that song?

No, I have not.

It’s, “I didn’t understand a word, but I [bleeping] loved it.”

[Laughs] That’s great. That’s the spirit. People have been asking me a lot lately about the research element as a listener, and whether I feel people need to do this deep analysis in order to get the songs.

Right. Like the songs should come with footnotes.

Yeah. And the idea of what it even means to “get” a song is a bit nebulous anyway. But I like the spirit of someone just liking it because he or she just likes it. That’s my goal: to make something that has some goodness in it that isn’t bound up by understanding the references or the double-meanings, or tracing the rhyme patterns. There has to be something else … or it becomes this purely cerebral thing, and that’s not what I’m interested in at all. I want to make a beautiful song that has emotional truths and moves a person sort of fundamentally.

I’m curious about your reaction to the Welsh band Joanna Gruesome co-opting your name.

[Laugh] You know, I’m reserving opinion on that because I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it’s good, but I’m just going to assume it’s a loving tribute, which is much more fun for me to believe.

It sounds like it would be the Garbage Pail Kids version of your name.

Yeah! That’s awesome. It’s the Garbage Pail version, which is kind of rad actually. But I mean, I think they’re probably not fans. Or maybe they are. But probably not.

Have you been banned from playing in Ecuador yet?

Banned from playing in Ecuador?

They’re the world’s top exporter of bananas, and it’s pretty clear where you come down on that subject. [In an interview Newsom called bananas a “non-food” and “like dog crap.”]

[Laughs] Oh man. Not as of yet, but I may have to swallow my deeply held principles and write a formal apology to the ambassador of Ecuador at some point. But I don’t know. I’m wary to go any place that is so full of bananas. It’s like going into the lion’s den.

Andy Downing is a RedEye special contributor. @andydowning33

Joanna Newsom, 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 16 at Chicago Theatre. $29.50-$59.50.